Levels of Phonemic Awareness

Awareness of Rhyming Words (age 3-4)
Is able to identify words that rhyme. For example, "Put your thumbs up if these two words rhyme, pail-tail or cow-pig?" or "Finish this rhyme, Red bed, blue ____."

Awareness of Syllables (age 4-5)
Realizes that words are made up of syllables. For example, "Can you clap and count the syllables or the word parts in rainbow?"

Awareness of Onsets and Rimes-Sound Substitution (age 6)
Is aware of onsets and rimes in words. For example, "What rhymes with /at/ and begins with /f/?"

Sound Isolation - Awareness of Beginning, Middle and Ending Sounds (age 6)
Identifies beginning, middle, and ending sounds in words. For example, "What is the beginning sound in neck?" "What is the ending sound in jog? "What sound do you hear in the middle of kitten?"

Phonemic Blending (age 6)
Is able to blend phonemes heard auditorily into a word.For example, after hearing
/c/ /a/ /t/ said in a stretched pronunciation, the child says cat.

Phoneme Segmentation (age 6-7)
Is able to count the sounds in a word (age 6). For example, "How many sounds do you hear in the word dog?"
Is able to identify the sounds heard in a word. For example, "What sounds do you hear in the word man?" This is the skill required in the Yopp-Singer Assessment.

Phoneme Manipulation (Age 7+)
Is able to omit or substitute phonemes to make new words. For example, "What word would we have if we changed the /t/ in Tommy to an /m/?" (mommy) or "What word would we have if we left out the /t/ in the middle of stand?" (sand)